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Would diverting mentally ill from jails and prisons expand the economy?

Jackie Shannon, who is chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of MHMR Services in San Angelo, has a column today in the Standard-Times which opens with the question, "Would you be surprised to learn that the odds of a seriously mentally ill person being in jail or prison in Texas compared with being in a hospital are 7.8 to one?" She supplies some interesting analysis mostly culled from a recent study from the National Sheriff's Association - More Mentally Ill Persons Are In Jails and Prisons Than Hospitals: A Survey of States (pdf) -  but also included a provocative, perhaps counterintuitive argument on the negative economic impacts of failing to supply adequate mental health care:Obviously it doesn?t make fiscal sense to cut mental health services and hospital beds if the result is higher costs to the prison system...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on August 12, 2010 (boomark / email).